When we talk about the benefits of “scaling green,” in large part we’re referring to the fundamental concept of “economies of scale” — “the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to size, output, or scale of operation, with cost per unit of output generally decreasing...

This morning, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) held a highly-informative webinar entitled, "What's in store for clean energy in 2016?" It's about an hour long, and we strongly recommend that you check it out if you have the time. If not, here are some highlights.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is out with an important new report, "Re-powering Markets: Market design and regulation during the transition to low-carbon power systems." This is notable for being "the first official publication of the IEA that analyses the electricity market framework for low-carbon power systems."

Now, we've put together an easy-to-read, easy-to-share infographic, highlighting the key findings from Citi's report. If you're interested in receiving the infographic, just click on the image below, provide us with your contact information, and we'll email it to you right away. Thanks!

These are exciting times in the energy storage industry, with technology rapidly improving and costs falling fast as the sector scales up. A just-released report by Greentech Media (GTM) examines this in detail and shows how it’s likely to continue. Solar PV balance of system (BOS) costs...

Of course, as Runevad notes, the U.S. energy market is a regulated one, with fossil fuels receiving subsidies as well. The ideal, in Runevad’s view, would be to “get to an open market…a level playing field…no subsidies on the fossil fuel side” or on renewables.

Check out this fascinating conversation between Bridgette Borst of Tigercomm and Anne Kelly, Senior Program Director for Public Policy at Ceres, regarding how businesses are joining the conversation around climate solutions and taking action.

As for the coal industry more broadly, big banks are bailing, with the " Dow Jones U.S. Coal Index, which captures the stock prices of the largest coal companies," losing "a stunning 95% of its value since July 2011," and with "a number of coal companies hav[ing] filed for bankruptcy, including Alpha Natural Resources...Walter Energy...Patriot Coal and James River Coal."

“Clean economy company CEOs should be really encouraged by these findings,” says Michael Casey, President of cleantech PR firm Tigercomm. “They are the latest data set showing that demand for what they are offering is getting baked into consumer preferences. The phony controversies of Solyndra and 'Climategate' of the last decade are fading. The critics and doubters are losing. ”

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We agree with the conclusion reached by PV Magazine, that although growth in renewable power in the United States is increasingly driven by non-RPS factors, "[t]his does not mean that RPS policies are not important."

Here are some key points from a new study by the Brattle Group for NRDC, entitled "Advancing Past 'Baseload' to a Flexible Grid," which argues that far from being a problem, a higher share of clean energy is actually a great opportunity for a wide variety of reasons.

In sum, the future looks extremely bright for clean energy, and for cleantech more broadly. The question isn't whether these sectors will grow rapidly, but simply how rapidly they'll grow. On that, we'd argue that EIA is far too conservative (or pessimistic, if you prefer), while BNEF is quite possibly too conservative as well, although they appear to be much closer to the mark than EIA's typically bearish-on-renewables, bullish-on-fossil-fuels forecasts.

According to a new report by the Energy Storage Association (ESA) and GTM Research, the U.S. energy storage industry is on fire, having just "deployed 71 MW of energy storage in Q1 2017...up 276% from the 18.9 MW deployed in Q1 2016," and with a lot more growth on the way.

See below for video of Chris Brown of Vestas, keynoting the opening session on day two of WINDPOWER 2017, concluding today in Anaheim, CA. According to Brown, who is completing his tenure as Chair of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the next five years will be the "best five years of your life" for the wind power industry.

But wind and other major cleantech sectors rely on distribution-only or distribution-mostly strategies that leave most of the marketing communications (“marcom”) power of these tools on idle. This year, we looked at why that happens. A few external drivers explain a lot.